Trusting the Medicine

Psychedelics. Small moments. Snakes.

Back to that plant medicine journey from a few weeks ago…

As is the point with these things, I’m still integrating, integration being the process of making meaning of a psychedelic experience. Integration is the after, that is in most cases where the real journey begins. Investigating, feeling, identifying how whatever was revealed in the handful of hours with the medicine wants to play out in the whole of your life.

There are all kinds of ways to engage with integration: meditation, journaling, time in nature, listening to medicine music, conscious conversation with a trusted person, therapist, or guide. I have done, am doing, all of the above.

But this time around, the integration is much quieter than it’s been in the past. I’m making space for it, mostly solo time in the early morning, but there’s a shift: instead of me orchestrating this integration with my pen and even my meditation, my words and my mind, the process is finding me in small moments. Small moments that, were I not attuned to the conversation and paying attention, could easily be missed.

Like the other morning over coffee, I was feeling a kind of aloneness and cloudy weight in my chest, present but undramatic. It was the kind of feeling you talk yourself out of or tamp down in the workings of a day. Again undramatically, the feeling quickly clarified itself as sadness around some current relational challenges. The cloudy weight took shape as an ache in my physical heart.

A thought unceremoniously landed: You’re not making this up. The effect was that of acknowledgment from a wise and steady friend. It felt like hearing the clichéd thing we all secretly want to hear: I see you. Except it was a conversation of one: the wise and steady part of me talking to this feeling.

The sadness didn’t leave upon this acknowledgment, but it didn’t sink into the shadows of my psyche to hijack my emotional clarity either. It felt clean, and more spacious in my body and mind. There was nothing to do about it in the moment. No big story to solve or entertain. It was just a thing to be respectfully tended and allowed. A thing that was true.

This was just one of many small moments since the journey. What an ordinary outcome for a psychedelic experience! you might think. And I did think this.

Shouldn’t it be bigger? More substantive? More…dramatic? This is not a very interesting story to tell.

But that quiet respect. That space in my chest. That lack of interpretation in my word-addled mind. I think this is called capacity, the ability to be with and hold, which I think makes me a more trustworthy human, to myself and to others. This, I think, is quite interesting.

And also, there were snakes.

I had the great fortune of being on a beautiful piece of land surrounded by nature for my psychedelic journey. The place itself is a living prescription. On the morning of my journey, I went for a walk in the meadow with the sun just starting to warm the wildflowers and grass.

Halfway through the walk, I saw and then heard a snake slither from its spot in the sun back into the cool damp. A few minutes later, a second snake. A few minutes later, I bent to investigate a sinewy, branch-like shape: a whole dead snake, sun-dried on the path.

Image of a whole snake carcass dried out by the sun with sunlight and green grass in the background

I’m not big on snakes, but I picked it up, my heart pounding with the discovery and mild ick of it all. In my hands it felt precious, like a gift, like the medicine already in the works. Sure, it was the right time of day in a very snake-friendly meadow, but three is a lot of snakes to encounter in a 15-minute stretch of time.

I carried the snake back to the house, eager to share the finding with my guide. Wow, we agreed, fondling the crisp carcass in admiration. I picked a few white flowers and made a humble altar for the snake on a small deck just outside the room where I would spend my day.

A dried snake carcass with a stem of small white flowers on a brown mat

I can’t say I was concerned with how this snake medicine might, or might not, show up in my journey. Did I want to be consumed, or even touched by snakes, even if only metaphorically? Not so much. But the snakes just felt like a fact, like the sadness over coffee. The energy was already in the room.

Snakes did show up in the journey itself. Hefty anaconda-sized snakes, not this cute-ish meadow variety, in vibrant patterns of red, yellow, black, and green. In the journey the snakes were, in fact, close; not exactly on my body, because my body wasn’t my physical body in the journey, but they wove themselves in and around my experience on repeat. Their thick bodies turning, weaving, integrating.

Dramatic! Only it wasn’t.

The snake archetype is most closely associated with healing, renewal, and transformation, the shedding of old skin. The snake shows up in universal symbols for healthcare and medicine, in both the rod of Asclepius (the ancient Greek god of medicine) and the caduceus. Snakes are revered as sacred by many cultures and seen as symbols of evil, temptation, and impending doom by others. Snakes represent duality, carriers of both venom and also life-saving cure. In dreams and psychedelic experience, snakes can represent deep healing and personal change, confrontation of fear and shadowy aspects of the self, the purging of memories, old ways of being, and even trauma.

The snake has a lot to say!

Snake symbolism, clockwise from top left: the staff of Asclepius, universal symbol of medicine; the snake as symbol of healing and renewal; the snake as symbol of temptation in the Garden of Eden; the ouroboros, a Greek symbol depicting wholeness and the cycle of life.

My experience of the snakes in this psychedelic journey was, to me miraculously, simple and quiet. Sweet. They were there to help.

Nothing scary or revelatory. No heart-to-heart confessions, inspiration, or guidance. Just, assistance. Big, beautiful, widely misunderstood and maligned emissaries helping me release, digest, and embody without context or story.

The day after the journey, a day in which my hand would usually be pressed to my journal in its own process of recording and dialogue, my only real thought was: I am devoid of thought. I had no words. For a word person, this can be both a relief and upending.

I was physically exhausted, only able to move my body in small, slow ways. And I was deeply calm and content. Because I had wisely given myself the space and time, I mostly surrendered to the nothingness: taking short walks, sitting in the sun, laying in a hammock under delicate and insistent bird chatter, soaking in an outdoor bathtub lazily gazing out at the trees. A tremendous grace.

View from the hammock: blue sky and wispy clouds through tree branches and green leaves

But even then, even as I tangibly felt like something very big indeed had moved through my system, and certainly as I inched closer to crossing the bridge back into regular life and home, I was tempted to question if anything had happened. Big snakes, no story.

Should I have received some kind of message or information? Did the snakes say or do something I might have missed?

I wasn’t actually questioning the snakes; they had showed up: literally, symbolically, psychically. But had I done my part? Was I doing enough to get what it all meant?

I’ve heard this is a common response to psychedelic experience. Sadly, yet one more example of the mental toll exacted by our psychotic cultural obsession with striving. Clearly a tough nut for even a hero’s dose of psychedelic mushrooms to crack.

And still, we have this longing to make and share meaning in all aspects of life. If we don’t understand or can’t name or describe or explain the thing, did it happen? Does it matter?

Stories aren’t everything, but they connect us. They clarify. What can we say that’s both honoring and true?

What’s funny about all of this is that my intention for the journey, arrived at through sizable resistance (I wanted it to be, you’ll never guess…bigger), was around trusting my own process. Trusting the truth and wisdom of the unfolding, no matter what showed up.

A tough nut to crack, indeed.

And so, the small moments. A simple thought landing like a wise friend over coffee. Easy tending to what is. Space in my chest.

This is now what I know about the meaning of things. You don’t make meaning so much as allow meaning to find you. You create the space and issue the invitation, and then you loosen the reins. You let it happen. You pay attention. You stay in your body. You believe what shows up, especially when it feels quiet and small.

This goes without saying, but you keep your eyes open for snakes.

xo,
Christa